Code:Breaker

Guest Author - Lesley Aeschliman

Code:Breaker (which is known as Kodo:Bureika in Japan) is an anime series based on a manga series written and illustrated by Akimine Kamijyo.

The series begins with a high school girl named Sakura Sakurakouji riding on the bus and seeing something unusual: people looking like they're burning in blue flames, with a young man in the middle who seems to be responsible for the burning. Sakura gets off the bus and contacts the police; however, when the police arrive, there's no evidence of anyone being burned.

The next day, a new transfer student named Rei Ogami joins Sakura's class, and he looks a lot like the young man Sakura had seen the previous evening. When Sakura confronts him about the previous night, Rei claims to not know what she's talking about. Sakura is still suspicious, and even returns to the place where she saw the burning people, with the idea that he would return to the scene of the crime. Rei does show up, but he only gives the impression of being a nice guy, and Sakura begins to ease her suspicions. However, in a later scene, it appears that Rei isn't as nice of a guy as he's claiming to be.

The first episode ends with Sakura getting beaten up by a local group of thugs that the police don't do anything about. Rei arrives on the scene, and ends up revealing to Sakura that he is indeed the young man she saw when she was on the bus; this happens when he burns the thugs that were attacking her. However, something unexpected happens right at the end of the first episode, and it literally made me gasp and then ask myself, "What just happened?"

Unfortunately, there wasn't any room in this episode to truly explain Rei's powers or why he's doing what he's doing. Hopefully, future episodes of the series will touch on those aspects, so viewers can better understand what's going on. Even without some of that explanation, I was still riveted by what I was watching. There's also some well-done animation that appears in the series, and it's done in such a way that the viewer almost feels as if they're right in the middle of the action.

Code:Breaker is an anime series that I would definitely want to try to watch more of in the future if I'm able to find the time. With some of the aspects and visuals in this series, I would personally recommend Code:Breaker to anime viewers who are 15 or 16 years of age and older.